IQALUIT
Three months later, residents on trucked water still haven't accepted the move to Waterless Wednesdays, a cost-cutting measure city administration made with little warning to cut mid-week water deliveries.

Anne Crawford, seen here appealing to Iqaluit city council in August, started a petition to reverse the "Waterless Wednesdays" change, according to which residents with trucked water no longer receive deliveries on Wednesdays. - Stewart Burnett/NNSL photo

"They just cut our water," said Anne Crawford, a resident of the community of Apex, which is entirely on trucked water. "They didn't even talk to us about what the preferred solutions were. We had to force them to a meeting by going to city council."

After she and more than a dozen residents appealed to city council in August, the city held a public meeting, which showed an almost unanimous desire to reverse the decision.

Residents on trucked water made it clear they agreed the city should be looking for ways to become more efficient, which was the goal of this schedule change but took issue with the lack of consultation and questioned the cutback on an essential service.

As of late last week, Crawford had gathered about 100 signatures for a petition to reverse the decision, which she planned to bring to the public works committee.

"I think we are optimistic following up on the public meeting," she said. "The public meeting was, I would say, a very positive encounter. Water users were very clear about their need for reliable water service, but they also demonstrated a lot of flexibility and support for the city in terms of dealing with the deficit."

As justification for the reduced schedule, administration has emphasized that the city's water deficit has increased by approximately $1 million annually for the past five years.

Crawford has questioned how the city determines that trucked water costs more than piped water. She said the city has been justifying that claim by not factoring in the capital and repair costs to the piped water infrastructure.

"They are not including the entire cost of piped water when they say piped water costs X dollars," said Crawford. "Their argument that trucked water is expensive and piped water is cheap is nonsense. I have never seen satisfactory numbers to convince me of that."

Central to the issue, she said, is fairness about what residents are paying for with their tax dollars.

"This is a service to the public and dividing it out as they have and imposing a penalty on one portion of the public is just not rational," she said.

At the public meeting in September, chief administrative officer Muhamud Hassan said he had been given a mandate when he moved to the city to transform how it does business.

"I'm mandated by the Government of Nunavut to make sure that the (water) fund is self-sustaining," he said.

He went on to say the city "flopped" in its communications about the change.

Former mayor Mary Wilman took heat for backing up the decision. Even as she left office, she told Nunavut News/North it was a tough decision the city had to stand by.

"There are more possible cost reduction measures that are necessary to make if the city is going to reduce its deficit," she said. "These are the realities that this new council will have to face and be strong enough to make unpopular decisions and stand by those decisions."

Crawford, though, remains optimistic.

"That was the old council," she said. "We're dealing with the new council, and I think and hope sanity prevails."

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